Nice Cooler but struggled with base

Reviewed by
Andy A.
Review Posted
12/05/2013

55

The cooler looks great and is indeed quiet but my main problem was installing the plastic processor base. The base comes with plastic inserts which unfortunately did not fit the Gigabyte motherboard. I even tried to sand the plastic pins down to size, no joy. I ended up by looking in my spares box for 4 suitable screws and these worked fine. This is more likely a motherboard hole-size issue rather than the Fan, but I would have thought that including 4 screws would have been an option. I like the fact you can quick-release the fan from the heatsink, this allowed me to overcome access difficulties within the case. The fan is indeed whisper quiet, so overall a 5 for rating but as for ease of use I scored 4 as installers may require additional screws.

Overall

Ease of use

Value for money

Quiet

Reviewed by
Kidd.
Review Posted
24/09/2012

55

A lot of reviews rave of how quiet this is. It is no understatement. My pc uses an AMD Phenom II 955 on an ASUS m4A78t-e mother board. After two years the old fan was pretty loud and needing to be replaced. This is easily 2.5 times as tall as the factory fan/heatsink and SILENT! Temps have dropped, noise has been eliminated. It is really big. It fits fine with 4 regular height memory sticks but if your memory has any heat sinks on the top then it may not work. My case has a side fan which barely fits with this but it does still fit. I'm really amazed by it so far. It does come with thermal paste on the base. There are a couple of holes on the mounting brackets so that you can get the best fit. I had to test fit the heatsink to the board a couple times to get it set right and it moved around enough to spread the little bit of paste all over the place.

Overall

Ease of use

Value for money

I can play starcraft for another 12 hours

Reviewed by
Lyn.
Review Posted
10/09/2012

55

First of the manual is clear. Install it without any difficulties. Fan speed reads as 0. Already checked to see if ii is spinning and yes it is.i5 quad 760 2.80Ghz (overclocked to 3ghz to increase RAM FSB)

Stock coolerIdle: 50°C - 60°CHigh spec. Gaming: 70°C - 85°C

This coolerIdle: 35°C - 37°CHigh spec. Gaming: 40°C - 45°C

Extremely impressed with results. Still little concerned about the speed. Very quiet, wasn't too difficult to install and performed excellently. Great product would recommend.

Overall

Ease of use

Value for money

Cautionary Tale

Reviewed by
John Peake.
Review Posted
09/11/2011

55

Installing this product was not easy. If you have an AMD based system, take EXTREME CARE when removing your existing OEM cooler from Phenom II CPU's

Mine had glued itself to the OEM cooler and removing the cooler pulled the CPU from its socket, bending pins on the processor. After over an hour of delicate work, I managed to straighten the pins and replace the CPU into its slot. Very frightening.

After the above crisis, fitting the Arctic cooler is fiddly but not to difficult.

In use it is almost silent and a revelation compared to the OEM cooler.

Very pleased with this product thus far.

Just PLEASE be so very very careful if you are AMD based.

Overall

Ease of use

Value for money

New Build

Reviewed by
Rob.
Review Posted
18/08/2011

55

Simply amazing, for the price.

Idle 25 Degrees, Prime2004 Load 36 Degrees.

(Just threw together a budget PC. This is attached to a PHenom II 560 (dual core),

overclocked by an additional 400 Mhz, no change in voltages.)

Case itself has good airflow and a side fan, which maybe improving performance, but even with that taken into account. 36 Degrees Load is very very impressive.

Overall

Ease of use

Value for money

Amazing for the money

Reviewed by
Tom .
Review Posted
02/03/2011

55

This CPU Cooler is an amazing purchase for the tiny sum of money that it costs, i have a Core i5 760 running stable at 4GHz which is a 50% overclock and i never exceed 70c and i never have thought to myself that the fan was excessively loud which is always a bonus. It may seem high but for such a cheaper cooler and a massive overclock it really is a brilliant product.

Overall

Ease of use

Value for money

very efficient cpu fan

Reviewed by
stephen.
Review Posted
18/01/2011

55

I was unsure at first at what CPU fan to purchase, after coming across this I have no regrets. The fan is very efficient at cooling the CPU, its never gone above 40 degrees when heavily loaded with games etc. It is also very quiet. Well recommended to all. Thanks.

Overall

Ease of use

Value for money

Not Suitable for AM3 socket phenom

Reviewed by
jalex.
Review Posted
23/01/2014

45

product description claims suitable for am3 socket. however the contact late on the heatsink is far too small, smaller in fact than the notoriously inadequate stock cooling that comes with the chip. If you wish to risk incomplete and uneven cooling then buy it by all means :p

Dabs response

Hi jalex, it definitely is ok for AM3 > <http://www.arctic.ac/eu_en/products/cooling/cpu/freezer-7-64-pro.html>

Overall

Ease of use

Value for money

Big and quiet

Reviewed by
Chris.
Review Posted
22/04/2013

45

I've bought two of these now, one for a Phenom II and one for an AMD-FX six core.

Pros:* Quiet* Good value for money* Preloaded with thermal paste (but we expect it these days)

Cons:* Might be too big for your case, it's huge, really huge. I managed fine, but something to consider.* Will probably prevent you from fitting memory in the closest slot to the processor. I did have this problem, but they weren't my primary slots and I was only using two.

Fitting:It comes with a couple of metal plates that you screw onto the heatsink for AMD the sockets. My advice is to screw them on loosely before you try and fit it, it's pretty easy to do really and you don't have to push as hard as some of the clip ones. It also comes with intel socket connector, but I didn't pay much attention to that.

The fan part just clips to the heatsink which made it a bit easier when fitting.

Overall

Ease of use

Value for money

BIG heatsink

Reviewed by
Anonymous
Review Posted
08/12/2012

45

This is bigger than I had expected and am so glad I wasn't retrofitting.

Installing onto new mb (these things seem to get smaller by the year). Had no install difficulty as was doing out of case, had I tried to do this after installing MB I may have hated it. It covers one of my DIMM slots making it unusable.

AMD install requires fan removal (easy enough as it loosely clips in place) to enable screwing in of retainer plates.

Base block a tad smaller than FX CPU but don't suppose this will matter given the size of it.